The room is freezing cold. I'm lying naked on a dirty concrete floor. Room is dark but not black, it is filled a strange grey luminescence. I cannot see the ceiling, the walls whirl off into darkness as they stretch towards the sky. Along one long wall 12-foot high dark purple drapes cover what I assume to be windows. An almost mechanical whirring, like a huge fan, fills the air.
The forest has been devastated. As far as the eye can see are only the stumps of what were once old and powerful trees. The ground is blackened and smokes. It looks as if some army came through and left nothing but fire behind.
The path is ancient. It looks like it was once an old Roman road: white, straight, wide, and determined to go straight to it's destination. Now it's been broken. The paving stones have been forced up out of the road at strange angles, some have sunk beneath the dirt. They are rutted with hundreds of years of travel - maybe the wheels of old carts, and pitted with age. It is treacherous and slippery, walking on it is dangerous. The broken road disappears into the distance. I'd rather go another way, but this is the only path available.
The path ends abruptly at a giant whirl pool. A roaring fills my ears as the twilight-blue water is sucked in swirl down into the darkness. As the water flows down the whirl pool it gains more and more speed until it makes me dizzy to look at it.
The drinking vessel is a wide, shallow bowl. It is made of sturdy clay. Along the rim of the bowl there is a little dip. It looks like that is where the drinker is intended to place her lips when she wishes to drink from it. The bowl has been decorated with a beautiful celadon green glaze that has almost an effervescent appearance. A thin black vine with flowers has been painted along the edge.
The key is half hidden between two block of stone, only the string, which looks like it was once a piece of pink satin, catches my eye. When I pick the key up I see it is short and fat and round. It looks like one of the keys that you get with a toy of some sort when you were a kid. A key to a diary or one of those jewelry boxes with the interminably spinning ballerina. When I look at the edge of the key, I realize one of the prongs has broken off. This key can't open anything now.